Long Term Antifouling

[Rich_F]

My wife and I have just spent a delighful bank holiday weekend scraping the antifoul off our new yacht, and the time has come to decide what to replace it with. I'm quite keen to minimize maintenance over the next few years, and am considering opting for a long-term solution, such as Copperbot.

Has anybody got any experiences or opinions, good or bad, of any multi-season antifouling products? If it makes a difference, I plan to be sailing on the west coast of Scotland, with the boat on the hard during the winter.

Thanks,

Rich

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[snowleopard]

i've had coppercoat on for 2 years now. it works reasonably well.

with hindsight i would have had it applied professionally as i have various patches where either the first coat has peeled off the hull or the second off the first. if it had been done professionally i would have had some comeback. the manufacturers just said i must have put it on wrong.

i would not use it for warm water cruising as it just doesn't stop the fouling in the tropics.

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[samuel]

Copperbot !! Rubbish.!!
I have a Stella which I rebuilt from a bare hull. I sheathed the hull in west epoxy & 300 Gram matt laid diagonally. ( note you hear stories of people wanting to cover outside of hull with just resin on its own This is no good on an old hull ) I then resin coated the inside of the hull with WRA 200 resin from Wessex. So far so good ( Very good in fact ). I then decided that as the hull had west epoxy on it I should go for copperbot. & spent about £ 300-00 on copperbot. This was applied in my factory at the correct temperature etc. The problem comes when wanting to sand it. Because the hull of a Stella is clinket you cannot get a really flat layer of copperbot on the hull. So you cannot abrade with really fine sandpaper as you would spend days rubbing off the high spots. The finish prior to sanding was the same as if you put thick emulsion on your ceiling at home with a roller & had not laid it off with a brush. ie avery fine stipple. I spent ages sanding to expose the copper & it all had to be done by hand around the landes of the clinker construction.
I launched the boat & six weeks later had such long weed growth it was like an upside down version of my neighbours lawn.
I put it on the rubbing poles & spent 2.5 hours trying to jet wash the weed off. Normally you would do this on a 26 ft boat in about 0.75 hours
I complained to Wessex & partly because I had spent about £ 3500 on resin etc from them doing the boat in the first place they supplied another lot of copperbott free of charge. The comment was that they had had a problem with the resin the first time I did it & had changed the formulation.
They recommended I rollered it on which I did for part & it ended up like artex. Knowing the problem I would have sanding it I reverted to a brush & it went on better. You have to mix water with the mix ( This seems odd with resin but does work provided you really shake the can with the lid on every 15 mins or so. make sure you put the lid on though because my son did not & when he shook the can he promptly shook half a litre all over me !!!)
We applied 3 coats & sanded it down. At this point I could not see any improvement in the exposure of copper so I went & bought 5 litres of XM antifouling & went over the lot. I had to give it a further coat in the season but as I live near the mooring this was OK. Where the XM had disapeared & exposed the copperbott I could see that the copperbott was not working. So all in all a total waste of time, money & effort. Stick to a normal antifoulling Copperbott is useless.
Sorry Wessex !!! but I have to admit that West resin on the rest of the boat was absolutely brilliant & I have the only Stella that does not leak from the minute it is launched to the minute it is taken out for storage Plus it is lighter & stronger than the others.!!

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[nordic_ranger]

Fouling on th West Coast of Scotland does not appear to be as bad as the Formites here would appear to experience on the South Coast of England judging by their posts.

The Catermaran that was berthed next to me did not have any fouling problems over the four years it was there and it was Copperboted from new.

Jim

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[quaelgeist2]

In a different region (Dutch coast), a number of owners have applied 4 layers of VC17m and did not have any propblems for 2 years. More possibly to come.

The advantage of VC17m is that it does not build up massive layers, you can use one tide to powerwash the hull and apply a new layer every year if you want. It dries in less than a quarter. Active ingredients are teflon and copper.



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